Articles by Alison C Fleming
IN_BO. Ricerche E Progetti Per Il Territorio, La Città E l’architettura. Vol. 12, No. 16 (2021): Dominion of the Sacred: Image, Cartography, Knowledge of the City after the Council of Trent. p.126–139, 2021
The 1609 beatification of Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, prompted the publi... more The 1609 beatification of Ignatius of Loyola, founder of the Society of Jesus, prompted the publication of the Vita Beati Patris Ignatii Loyolae, printed by the Galle workshop in Antwerp (1610), which uniquely incorporates a birds-eye view of Rome. Titled Roma Ignaziana, the map features the facades of Jesuit houses, colleges, and churches rising up through the existing urban fabric, dwarfing recognizable structures, such as the Colosseum and Pantheon. It highlights the Society’s transformation of the city of Rome, especially in the central area near the Capitoline Hill, following its 1540 foundation. The largest buildings are the Chiesa del Gesù, mother church of the Society, and the their school, the Collegio Romano. In their first years, the Jesuits focused their attention on this neighborhood, establishing social service organizations here. Situating their headquarters in the heart of the urban center allowed the Jesuits to serve those who needed them most, and to this day the Society of Jesus remains a religious order strongly associated with cities. Yet, Roma Ignaziana is not a completely original design. The dominant Jesuit structures are laid on an earlier map of the city, an engraving from Braun and Hogenberg's Civitates Orbis Terrarum (Cologne, 1572), itself adapted from Ugo Pinard’s 1555 map of Rome. The Jesuit reworking of this map is but one aspect of their ongoing, strategic adaptation of extant images, here allowing them to weave themselves into the existing fabric of Christian Rome. This study investigates the very literal placement of the principal Jesuit buildings into a representation of Rome, revealing a portrait of how the Society saw themselves as an integral aspect of the reforms underway in post-Tridentine Rome.
Gateways to the Book: Frontispieces and Title Pages in Early Modern Europe (Brill, 2021. Series: Intersections, Volume: 76) Edited by Gitta Bertram, Nils Büttner, and Claus Zittel; p. 475-505, 2021
This study emerges from the question of how to read a book with more than one frontispiece. In ... more This study emerges from the question of how to read a book with more than one frontispiece. In other words, how do the signposts that move the reader through the book change as a result? My investigation seeks to elucidate the unusual position played by the multiple frontispieces of the Cultus Sancti Francisci Xaverii Societatis Jesu Japoniae & Indiarum apostoli (‘The Veneration of St. Francis Xavier of the Society of Jesus, apostle of Japan and the Indies’), a devotional work of the mid-eighteenth century, and the relationship between the frontispieces and the engravings that organize the text of the devotions comprising the body of the book.This study will offer a thorough examination of the book with regard to both text and image, and evaluate the ways in which the frontispieces augment the components of the book in order to offer further commentary on the life of the saint and devotion to him. In this book the active and engaged reader does not merely read from beginning to end but moves through the text and images in a multi-directional fashion, given the fact that the devotional content invites repeated consultation.
Picturing Death 1200-1600, eds. Noa Turel and Stephen Perkinson, 2021
This study is chapter 16 of the collected volume Picturing Death 1200–1600.
Series:
Brill's Stu... more This study is chapter 16 of the collected volume Picturing Death 1200–1600.
Series:
Brill's Studies in Intellectual History, Volume: 321/50
Brill's Studies on Art, Art History, and Intellectual History, Volume: 321/50
Editors: Stephen Perkinson and Noa Turel
Picturing Death: 1200–1600 explores the visual culture of mortality over the course of four centuries that witnessed a remarkable flourishing of imagery focused on the themes of death, dying, and the afterlife. In doing so, this volume sheds light on issues that unite two periods—the Middle Ages and the Renaissance—that are often understood as diametrically opposed. The studies collected here cover a broad visual terrain, from tomb sculpture to painted altarpieces, from manuscripts to printed books, and from minute carved objects to large-scale architecture. Taken together, they present a picture of the ways that images have helped humans understand their own mortality, and have incorporated the deceased into the communities of the living.
Contributors: Jessica Barker, Katherine Boivin, Peter Bovenmyer, Xavier Dectot, Maja Dujakovic, Brigit Ferguson, Alison C. Fleming, Fredrika Jacobs, Henrike C. Lange, Robert Marcoux, Walter S. Melion, Stephen Perkinson, Johanna Scheel, Mary Silcox, Judith Steinhoff, and Noa Turel.
Chapels of the Cinquecento and Seicento in the Churches of Rome: Form, Function, Meaning, eds. Chiara Franceschini, Patrizia Tosini, and Steven F. Ostrow (Milan: Officina Libraria, 2020), 190-211., 2020
This chapter demonstrates how the chapel in Il Gesu persuasively verifies and celebrates the life... more This chapter demonstrates how the chapel in Il Gesu persuasively verifies and celebrates the life, sanctity, and legacy of Francis Xavier for the Roman audience, a view that is essential to understanding how in the seventeenth century the Society of Jesus commemorated one of the first Jesuit saints in Rome. The focus on Xavier as missionary is constructed through the relic of his right arm with hand, extracted from his incorrupt corpse in Goa and brought to Rome to serve as the locus of his cult in the Society’s principal church. The frescoes highlight Xavier’s dedication to day-to-day missionary activities—baptizing the converted, preaching with crucifix in hand, and combatting heretics—as opposed to the miracles of healing and resurrection emphasized in other pictorial cycles of the period. The careful selection of stone and the vertical force that lifts the viewer’s eyes from Xavier’s earthly body to his welcome into heaven by the Trinity extend his story and its Christological meaning throughout the chapel. Following the founding principles of the Society of Jesus, Xavier emulated Christ in proselytizing and saving, and for his great devotion to this difficult and dangerous work, he was rewarded with incorruptibility. The coordinated design of the whole reliquary chapel motivates the Roman audience to reflect upon the crucial role of the Jesuit missions and its members as companions of Christ in the era of reform. As Antonio Vieira astutely observed in 1694, Xavier’s arm relic—as index of his body—extends the spiritual value of his work in Asia back to Europe, allowing for his cult to be celebrated across the globe
The Interaction of Art and Relics in Late Medieval and Early Modern Art, ed. Livia Stoenescu (Brepols, 2020), 51-63., 2020
This chapter studies the evolution of the tomb of St. Francis Xavier from a simple coffin encasin... more This chapter studies the evolution of the tomb of St. Francis Xavier from a simple coffin encasing the relic body in 1552 to the retooling as a work of art over the course of the seventeenth century. The final, monumental sepulcher registers sustained intercontinental associations between the saint’s relics and devotees, artists, and Italian patrons engaged in furnishing the material components of the tomb. Treated as a highly venerated relic with recognized miraculous and healing powers, the body of St. Francis Xavier also inspired the tomb’s lavish decoration with sculptural ornaments, bronze relief panels, and sections of pietre dure style of inlaid marble reminiscent of both Florence’s Cappella dei Principi and India’s Taj Mahal.
Journal of Jesuit Studies 6.2, p.187-195, 2019
This article serves as the introduction to the Journal of Jesuit Studies thematic issue on Jesuit... more This article serves as the introduction to the Journal of Jesuit Studies thematic issue on Jesuit Visual Culture. The visual arts are a powerful tool of communication, a fact recognized and utilized by the Jesuits from the foundation of the order. The Society of Jesus has long used imagery, works of art and architecture, and other aspects of visual and material culture for varied purposes, and the five articles in this issue of the Journal of Jesuit Studies explore how the art they commissioned exemplifies the ideals, goals, desires, and accomplishments of the Society. In particular, these five scholars examine a wide array of images and ideas to consider myriad relationships between the Society and works of art in the early modern period, and the implications of their increasingly global footprint.
Encountering the Renaissance: Celebrating Gary M. Radke and 50 Years of the Syracuse University Graduate Program in Renaissance Art, eds. Molly Bourne and A. Victor Coonin (Ramsey, NJ: the WAPACC Organization, 2016); 235-244., 2016
For centuries, the Benedictine monks at the abbey of Pomposa dined under the watchful images of J... more For centuries, the Benedictine monks at the abbey of Pomposa dined under the watchful images of Jesus Christ, St. Benedict, founder of their order, and St. Guido (d.1046), their pious eleventh-century abbot. The
walls of their refectory were adorned with frescoes of the Deesis, the
Last Supper, the Miracle Supper of St. Guido, the Prayer in the Garden, and St. Guido in prayer. These images allowed a trio of role models to guide the monks through their meals, confirming the importance of food and drink in the context of intercession and salvation.The manner in which the scenes of the local saint, Guido, were both modeled on the life of St. Benedict and set up to parallel scenes from the Passion of Christ is unusual and unprecedented. St. Benedict here serves as exemplar,
helping to establish an iconography for St. Guido as a capable abbot.
Additionally, the elaborate program of the Pomposa refectory, executed in the early fourteenth century, is one of the earliest painted dining halls
of this type. It stands as an early example of what will become a common practice.
NEMLA Italian Studies: The Renaissance Dialogue, v.38 (2016): 139-157.
Nierika: Revista de Estudios de Arte, v.2 (2013): 32-41.
The Mid-Atlantic Almanack, v.21 (2012): 145-164.
Visibile Teologia: Il Libro Sacro Figurato in Italia tra Cinquecento e Seicento, eds. Erminia Ardissino and Elisabetta Selmi, Roma: Edizioni di Storia e Letteratura, 2012, 115-125.
Foundation, Dedication and Consecration in Early Modern Europe, eds. Maarten Delbeke and Minou Schraven, Intersections: Interdisciplinary Studies in Early Modern Culture, v.22 Brill, 225-249., 2011
Sixteenth Century Journal, v.37 n.3 (2006): 701-720.
The Piazza degli Uffizi in Florence is a unique architectural space housing the offices establish... more The Piazza degli Uffizi in Florence is a unique architectural space housing the offices established by the Medici grand duke Cosimo f in the sixteenth century. This article examines the unusual physical and social character of the space, from the perspective of the people-performing as both spectators and actors-who have experienced this environment. Their presence and participation is necessary to complete the space, as in a theater or onstage, as each beholder's perception, action, and interaction is different. The complex reveals and manifests the identity of the duke and the citizens of Florence through five seemingly disparate means: a consideration of architectural termininology, the collective patronage of the project, its position in the urban setting (especially in relation to the transformations made by Cosimo I), the manner in which the architect Giorgio Vasari employs theatrical conventions, and the necessary presence of people. This essay will suggest that Vasari exploited dramatic conventions with which he was very familiar to create a space that recalls both a theater and a stage. The intention is to examine the outdoor arena created by the Uffizi, from the perspective of the citizens of Florence who move through this space, playing the roles of both spectators an actors.
Books by Alison C Fleming
View here: https://brill.com/view/title/59883
Gateways to the Book investigates the complex image... more View here: https://brill.com/view/title/59883
Gateways to the Book investigates the complex image-text relationships between frontispieces and illustrated title pages with the following texts in European books published between 1500 and 1800. Although interest in this broad field of research has increased in the past decades, many varieties of title pages, many printers and books remain as yet unstudied.
The fifteen essays collected in this volume tackle this field from a great variety of academic approaches asking how the images can be interpreted, how the texts and contexts shape their interpretation and how they in turn shape the understanding of the text.
The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the Jesuits (Cambridge University Press, 2017), 2017
Founded in 1540 by Ignatius of Loyola, the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) has been praised as a saint... more Founded in 1540 by Ignatius of Loyola, the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) has been praised as a saintly god-send and condemned as the work of Satan. With some 600 entries written by 110 authors - those inside and outside the order - this encyclopedia opens up the complexities of Jesuit history and explores the current life and work of this Catholic religious order and its global vocation. Approximately 230 entries are biographies, focusing on key people in Jesuit history, while the majority of the entries focus on Jesuit ideals, concepts, terminology, places, institutions, and events. With some 70 illustrations highlighting the centrality of visual images in Jesuit life, this encyclopedia is a comprehensive volume providing accessible and authoritative coverage of the Jesuits' life and work across the continents during the last five centuries. General Editor: Thomas Worcester, SJ.
Book Reviews by Alison C Fleming
Journal of Jesuit Studies, 2020
Journal of Jesuit Studies, 2019
Journal of Jesuit Studies, 2018
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Articles by Alison C Fleming
Series:
Brill's Studies in Intellectual History, Volume: 321/50
Brill's Studies on Art, Art History, and Intellectual History, Volume: 321/50
Editors: Stephen Perkinson and Noa Turel
Picturing Death: 1200–1600 explores the visual culture of mortality over the course of four centuries that witnessed a remarkable flourishing of imagery focused on the themes of death, dying, and the afterlife. In doing so, this volume sheds light on issues that unite two periods—the Middle Ages and the Renaissance—that are often understood as diametrically opposed. The studies collected here cover a broad visual terrain, from tomb sculpture to painted altarpieces, from manuscripts to printed books, and from minute carved objects to large-scale architecture. Taken together, they present a picture of the ways that images have helped humans understand their own mortality, and have incorporated the deceased into the communities of the living.
Contributors: Jessica Barker, Katherine Boivin, Peter Bovenmyer, Xavier Dectot, Maja Dujakovic, Brigit Ferguson, Alison C. Fleming, Fredrika Jacobs, Henrike C. Lange, Robert Marcoux, Walter S. Melion, Stephen Perkinson, Johanna Scheel, Mary Silcox, Judith Steinhoff, and Noa Turel.
walls of their refectory were adorned with frescoes of the Deesis, the
Last Supper, the Miracle Supper of St. Guido, the Prayer in the Garden, and St. Guido in prayer. These images allowed a trio of role models to guide the monks through their meals, confirming the importance of food and drink in the context of intercession and salvation.The manner in which the scenes of the local saint, Guido, were both modeled on the life of St. Benedict and set up to parallel scenes from the Passion of Christ is unusual and unprecedented. St. Benedict here serves as exemplar,
helping to establish an iconography for St. Guido as a capable abbot.
Additionally, the elaborate program of the Pomposa refectory, executed in the early fourteenth century, is one of the earliest painted dining halls
of this type. It stands as an early example of what will become a common practice.
Books by Alison C Fleming
Gateways to the Book investigates the complex image-text relationships between frontispieces and illustrated title pages with the following texts in European books published between 1500 and 1800. Although interest in this broad field of research has increased in the past decades, many varieties of title pages, many printers and books remain as yet unstudied.
The fifteen essays collected in this volume tackle this field from a great variety of academic approaches asking how the images can be interpreted, how the texts and contexts shape their interpretation and how they in turn shape the understanding of the text.
Book Reviews by Alison C Fleming
Series:
Brill's Studies in Intellectual History, Volume: 321/50
Brill's Studies on Art, Art History, and Intellectual History, Volume: 321/50
Editors: Stephen Perkinson and Noa Turel
Picturing Death: 1200–1600 explores the visual culture of mortality over the course of four centuries that witnessed a remarkable flourishing of imagery focused on the themes of death, dying, and the afterlife. In doing so, this volume sheds light on issues that unite two periods—the Middle Ages and the Renaissance—that are often understood as diametrically opposed. The studies collected here cover a broad visual terrain, from tomb sculpture to painted altarpieces, from manuscripts to printed books, and from minute carved objects to large-scale architecture. Taken together, they present a picture of the ways that images have helped humans understand their own mortality, and have incorporated the deceased into the communities of the living.
Contributors: Jessica Barker, Katherine Boivin, Peter Bovenmyer, Xavier Dectot, Maja Dujakovic, Brigit Ferguson, Alison C. Fleming, Fredrika Jacobs, Henrike C. Lange, Robert Marcoux, Walter S. Melion, Stephen Perkinson, Johanna Scheel, Mary Silcox, Judith Steinhoff, and Noa Turel.
walls of their refectory were adorned with frescoes of the Deesis, the
Last Supper, the Miracle Supper of St. Guido, the Prayer in the Garden, and St. Guido in prayer. These images allowed a trio of role models to guide the monks through their meals, confirming the importance of food and drink in the context of intercession and salvation.The manner in which the scenes of the local saint, Guido, were both modeled on the life of St. Benedict and set up to parallel scenes from the Passion of Christ is unusual and unprecedented. St. Benedict here serves as exemplar,
helping to establish an iconography for St. Guido as a capable abbot.
Additionally, the elaborate program of the Pomposa refectory, executed in the early fourteenth century, is one of the earliest painted dining halls
of this type. It stands as an early example of what will become a common practice.
Gateways to the Book investigates the complex image-text relationships between frontispieces and illustrated title pages with the following texts in European books published between 1500 and 1800. Although interest in this broad field of research has increased in the past decades, many varieties of title pages, many printers and books remain as yet unstudied.
The fifteen essays collected in this volume tackle this field from a great variety of academic approaches asking how the images can be interpreted, how the texts and contexts shape their interpretation and how they in turn shape the understanding of the text.
Chapels of the Cinquecento and Seicento in the Churches of Rome, edited by Chiara Franceschini, Steven F. Ostrow, and Patrizia Tosini, Milano: Officina Libraria, 2020
Nine studies of early modern private chapels as multimedia “laboratories” for social and devotional display and for artistic invention and innovation in 16th- and 17th-century Rome.
Roman church interiors throughout the Early Modern age were endowed with rich historical and visual significance. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, in anticipation of and following the Council of Trent, and in response to the expansion of the Roman Curia, the chapel became a singular arena in which wealthy and powerful Roman families, as well as middle-class citizens, had the opportunity to demonstrate their status and role in Roman society. In most cases the chapels were conceived not as isolated spaces, but as part of a more complex system, which involved the nave and the other chapels within the church, in a dialogue among the arts and the patrons of those other spaces. This volume explores this historical and artistic phenomenon through nine examples involving the patronage of prominent Roman families such as the Frangipane, Spadas, Caetanis, Cybos and important artists and architects such as Federico Zuccari, Annibale Carracci, Giacomo della Porta, Francesco da Volterra, Carlo Maderno, Alessandro Algardi, Carlo Maratta.
Table of Contents:
Chapels: An Introduction
Chiara Franceschini, Steven F. Ostrow, and Patrizia Tosini
Map of the Churches
The Frangipani Chapel in San Marcello: Farnesian Devotion, Antiquarian Taste, and Municipal Pride
Patrizia Tosini
Between all’Antica and Acheiropoieton: The Cappella Gregoriana in the Ekphrases
of Lorenzo Frizolio (1582) and Ascanio Valentino (1583)
Fabio Barry
Caetani’s Blood: Magnificence, Lineage, and Martyrdom in the Family Chapel of Santa Pudenziana
Enrico Parlato
“A Gem Set in Most Resplendent Gold”: Girolamo Rusticucci’s Confessio Chapel in Santa Susanna
Steven F. Ostrow
A Splendid Shrine for an Ugly Image: Visual Interactions in the Salviati Chapel at San Gregorio al Celio
Chiara Franceschini
Carving Out Identity: The Boncompagni Family, Alessandro Algardi, and the Chapel in the Sacristy of Santa Maria in Vallicella
Guendalina Serafinelli
The Angelic Balustrade of the Spada Chapel in San Girolamo della Carità
Louise Rice
The Arm Relic as Index of the Body: The Chapel of Francis Xavier in the Gesù
Alison C. Fleming and Stephanie C. Leone
A Chapel in Dialogue: The Cybo Chapel in Santa Maria del Popolo
Fabrizio Federici
List of abbreviations
Bibliography
Contributors
Index of Names
Index of Places
Photo Credits